Melissa smirked, finally looking up. “He has a point,” she said to Mom, as if discussing the weather. “You can’t just let parasites walk around thinking they have rights. It sends the wrong message.”
They laughed. The three of them. A harmonious chord of cruelty that felt like a private joke I was the punchline of.
I stumbled toward the sink, reaching for the roll of paper towels with shaking hands. My mother moved with surprising speed, yanking the roll away.
“That’s for the guests,” she said flatly. She kicked a rag from under the sink toward my feet. “Use that.”
I picked it up. It smelled of mildew and old bacon grease, but I pressed it against my bleeding mouth anyway. The humiliation was clawing at my chest, far sharper than the physical pain.
“You think I’m joking?” Dad stepped into my shadow again. “I’ll call Mr. Henderson right now. One phone call, and you’re unemployable.”
I looked at him through a blur of tears. I wanted to throw something. I wanted to shatter the expensive vase on the mantelpiece that I had paid for. But I knew better. They fed on reactions. They wanted me to break, to beg, to scream so they could call me hysterical.
I wiped my mouth, straightened my spine, and forced my trembling legs to hold me upright.
“You’ll regret this,” I said. My voice was quiet, muffled by the rag, but steady.
His eyes narrowed, the vein in his temple pulsing. “You’re already regretting it,” he mocked, tapping his own front tooth.
“You’ve always thought you were smarter than us,” Mom chuckled, shaking her head. “But you’re nothing without family. Remember that.”
Melissa set her phone down, sighing as if this was all a terrible inconvenience to her schedule. “Actually, let’s make this easy. Just give me your banking password. I’ll transfer it myself.”
I stared at her. The audacity was almost surreal. “You’ve lost your mind,” I whispered.
Her face hardened into stone. “No, you’ve lost your place in this family. And it’s about to get worse if you keep talking.”
I walked out of the kitchen slowly, holding my jaw. My father’s voice trailed after me: “Don’t be late with that transfer!”
I locked myself in my bedroom and sank onto the floor. The mirror on my dresser caught my reflection: swollen lip, gap-toothed grimace, eyes swollen with rage. I touched the empty space in my mouth and felt something shift inside me. It wasn’t just pain. It was a cold, quiet clarity.
